"The happiest place on earth," is where the concert was being held tonight. The House of Blues in Downtown Disney (Anaheim), was the place to catch Mests very first headling tour. Brought along for support on the tour (in order of apperance) were MadCap, Catch 22, and HomeGrown. After watching the last 2 innings of the victorious play-off game for the Angels, it ended just in time for the first band to come on.
Starting things off for the night was MadCap, a still small but never the less growing band from Pasadena, California. I remember way back before they signed to Side One Dummy they were playing this small coffee house all the time by my house, hell my band even played with them there a few times. To see them here tonight, was a great feeling, knowing how far they have come and how hard they have worked. Their music is, well hard to describe. It's got a toouch of the "oi oi" sound, along with some Rancid, and standout vocals where all three front men sing together blending the choruses together perfectly. If you have never heard of these guys, check out the songs "Bright Lights, Big City" and "Going on the Road." These guys had great stage presence, and managed to warm the crowd up nicely.
Catch 22, a band who I had only heard a few songs by. It was their early stuff, Keasbey Nights, with their old (and in my opinion better) singer. But, that is not the point of this review, the point of this review is to tell you how much they (excuse me for my language but) FUCKING SUCKED! It was beyond awful. The vocals were horrible, the horns sucked, everything about them was bad. This was ska at its absolutely lowest form. Too many things were going on at once that weren't blending together, and their music was complete and utter chaotic noise. For anyone who wants to see a band with no energy play horrible music then I suggest this ska band from New Jersey, Catch 22.
HomeGrown, ah yes, a very good band. I would be happy just to see these guys headline, and after their set that is what it felt like. Everyone was singing along to the newly signed Drive-Thru band, making them feel right at "home." The band managed to play all of their hits, including quite a few songs off of "Act Your Age," and even a surprise of an old classic, "Get a Job." The rest of the show was the new album (which I personally think sound great live) and the great renditions of "Surfer Girl" and "Barbie Girl." Johnee made some funny jokes, making fun of white people because he is Asian and he is "higher up in intelligence." Adam came back with jokes about how Johnee eats cats and dogs, and it went back in forth thru out a few songs, which was very humurous to listen to.
The highlight of the night, was, yes, you guessed it...Mest. As I said before, this is their first headlining tour (even tho I remember them playing shows with the riddlin kids opening up for them and mest headlined...maybe they meant full u.s. tour), and it turned out to be a great show. The crowd was treated to running around and jumping all over the stage, and all of the hits off of "Wasting Time" and "Destination Unkown." They did spare the crowd from "What's the Dillio" tho (haha nice rhyming I know), which is a good thing. The band had water fights, throwing their water bottles up at the balcony and the balcony thru their bottles right back down, and this lasted for a long time until all the water was used up. It seriously felt like it was raining inside the venue (and on the sound booth), water was flying everywhere. The only part of the evening that I did not enjoy was (even tho I do not have all the info on it) Tony, the lead singer for Mest, got really pissed at the guitar tech, and during one of the songs, kept pushing over his microphone stand and making the guy pick it up, making him fetch his guitar when he threw it out into the crowd (twice), and making fun of him into the microphone. It was a very sad sight seeing Tony be such a dick to the guy who you could tell was about to burst out crying. That is my only complaint of the night, and the drunk guys behind me who didn't like one of the bands the whole night, but that seems to happen at every show and I still have never figured it out. One more thing, don't ever leave the floor of the Anaheim HOB because if you go upstairs, you have to wait in a line to get back downstairs, and since only 600 people are allowed downstairs at once; you have to wait for one person to come up, and then one can go down. It is quite shitty that way.
All in all (I'm sorry this review blows, I am tired and well, nevermind. It doesn't matter what I write, none of you will read this anyway, you just clicked on here to say how much all of the bands suck) this was a wonderful show, that ended after midnight. All the bands were good except for Catch 22, who again I would like to say were terrible, but at least they seemed like nice guys up on stage.
That is all.